Ap­par­ently, no one has in­formed Robert Ca­sey and Claire Mc­Caskill that they should be run­ning scared.

Ca­sey and Mc­Caskill are among the 10 Demo­crat­ic sen­at­ors fa­cing reelec­tion next year in states that Pres­id­ent Trump car­ried in 2016, of­ten by com­mand­ing mar­gins. After that per­form­ance, many in both parties as­sumed these would be the Sen­ate Demo­crats most vul­ner­able to White House pres­sure. Dur­ing the trans­ition, al­most all of the “Trump 10” de­clared their will­ing­ness to co­oper­ate with the new pres­id­ent. “There are prob­ably a num­ber of areas where we can work with him,” Ca­sey told MS­N­BC shortly after Trump nar­rowly car­ried his home state of Pennsylvania.

It is an un­der­state­ment to say the re­la­tion­ship between the pres­id­ent and the Trump 10 hasn’t worked out that way. In re­cent in­ter­views, both Mc­Caskill and Ca­sey made clear the White House has done al­most noth­ing to so­li­cit their in­put or en­list their sup­port. “I will be op­tim­ist­ic and hope that mo­ment comes, but not yet,” Mis­souri’s Mc­Caskill told me.

In­stead of be­ing tugged to­ward Trump, both Ca­sey and Mc­Caskill have been pro­pelled to­ward res­ol­ute res­ist­ance of his agenda. In that, they are the rule, not the ex­cep­tion, for the Trump 10. The group also in­cludes Ohio’s Sher­rod Brown, Flor­ida’s Bill Nel­son, Wis­con­sin’s Tammy Bald­win, and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow in swing states that tilted to­ward Trump; and Montana’s Jon Test­er, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, In­di­ana’s Joe Don­nelly, and West Vir­gin­ia’s Joe Manchin in more-con­ser­vat­ive states where the pres­id­ent romped.

Their op­pos­i­tion took root early in Trump’s ten­ure. None of the 10 backed con­firm­a­tion for Betsy De­Vos as Edu­ca­tion sec­ret­ary. Just Manchin, Heitkamp, and Don­nelly voted to con­firm Su­preme Court Justice Neil Gor­such. And, more re­cently, all 10 have signaled op­pos­i­tion to the evolving Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­an le­gis­la­tion to re­peal the Af­ford­able Care Act.

This pat­tern of res­ist­ance has forced Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans to try to squeeze more of their agenda in­to the re­con­cili­ation pro­cess, which re­quires few­er votes to pass le­gis­la­tion. It’s also fram­ing what could be the pivotal ques­tion in next year’s Sen­ate midterm elec­tions: Will these Demo­crats pay a price for con­sist­ently op­pos­ing Trump in states that voted for him only last year?

“They had bet­ter hope the king is dead,” said Pennsylvania-based GOP con­sult­ant John Brabend­er, “and that a year from now Don­ald Trump isn’t be­ing seen, on the core is­sues he prom­ised to these [voters], that he has de­livered.”

So far, though, both Ca­sey and Mc­Caskill—along with their col­leagues—have been em­boldened to op­pose Trump pre­cisely be­cause they be­lieve his agenda hasn’t met those voters’ needs. Mc­Caskill said she “re­spects” Trump voters and their choice to “pull the pin on this gren­ade [to] see if we can up­set the status quo.” But she ar­gued that Trump’s agenda would de­liv­er “a gut punch to [the] rur­al Mis­souri” com­munit­ies where he ran best—thanks to a health care plan that would raise premi­ums for older and small-town con­sumers; pro­pos­als to shift fed­er­al fund­ing from pub­lic to private schools through vouch­ers; and an in­fra­struc­ture plan centered on pro­mot­ing private in­vest­ment and adding toll roads, both of which are more likely to be­ne­fit urb­an areas.

Ca­sey poin­ted to sim­il­ar risks in the con­gres­sion­al GOP pro­pos­als to severely cut Medi­caid, which he said could destabil­ize both the phys­ic­al and eco­nom­ic health of rur­al Pennsylvania. (In over half of Pennsylvania’s rur­al counties, he poin­tedly noted, the loc­al hos­pit­al is either the largest or second-largest em­ploy­er.) Add in the toll-fo­cused in­fra­struc­ture plan and pro­posed re­duc­tions in com­munity-de­vel­op­ment grants and home-heat­ing as­sist­ance for low-in­come seni­ors, Ca­sey said, and “I don’t think that’s what people in his base thought they were get­ting in their com­munit­ies.”

Just as strik­ing as the sub­stance of the Trump 10’s cri­ti­cism is its style.

No one has ever used the word “firebrand” to de­scribe Ca­sey, a soft-spoken former state aud­it­or with a cent­rist ped­i­gree. (He’s one of the last prom­in­ent Demo­crats to op­pose leg­al abor­tion.) Yet, since Trump’s vic­tory, Ca­sey’s de­fin­ing im­age came when he rushed, still in form­al white tie, from a Phil­adelphia Or­ches­tra ball to join an air­port protest against the pres­id­ent’s first travel ban in Janu­ary.

“It’s not just the policy agenda, which I think … caters to the Right,” Ca­sey told me. “It’s the whole ap­proach: the in­sults, the tweets, the di­vid­ing. … In most in­stances, pres­id­ents try to … be the adult in the room. [But] on many days … if there is not pois­on in the wa­ter, he tends to add the pois­on of di­vi­sion and dis­cord in­stead of try­ing to bring people to­geth­er.”

Mc­Caskill, who was also a state aud­it­or after work­ing for years as a pro­sec­utor, has al­ways had a more acerbic polit­ic­al style than Ca­sey, though her vot­ing re­cord is even more cent­rist. Her de­fin­ing Trump-era mo­ment came at a hear­ing in June when she poin­tedly chal­lenged Sen­ate Fin­ance Com­mit­tee Chair­man Or­rin Hatch of Utah over the ab­sence of pub­lic de­bate be­fore the re­lease of the Sen­ate health care bill. “The ques­tion is,” she said of the smoth­er­ing secrecy, “is this go­ing to be a new nor­mal?”

The Trump 10’s de­fi­ant streak car­ries un­deni­able risks. Trump car­ried more than half of the vote in six of the 10 states and dom­in­ated with work­ing-class whites across them, exit polls found. Sev­er­al of the 10, par­tic­u­larly Mc­Caskill and Don­nelly, be­nefited from weak op­pon­ents last time. All could face tough re­cruits in 2018 (though Re­pub­lic­an Rep. Ann Wag­n­er, con­sidered Mc­Caskill’s most for­mid­able po­ten­tial chal­lenger, an­nounced Monday that she won’t run).

Yet all of these Demo­crats could be­ne­fit from grow­ing pub­lic doubts about Trump’s per­form­ance and tem­pera­ment. By stress­ing con­front­a­tion over ac­com­mod­a­tion, the Trump 10 are wager­ing that vet­er­an Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Geoff Gar­in is right when he pre­dicts that “even in places where Trump won … he will end up be­ing a big­ger prob­lem next year for the Re­pub­lic­an than the Demo­crat­ic can­did­ates.

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